Transgender Rights

Context: The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Right’s ban on medically unnecessary sex-change surgeries on intersex infants shows recognition of transgender rights.

Issues Faced by Transgender People

• Problems associated with sex-change surgeries: gender reassignment interventions through surgery are proved to be irreversible, resulting in long-term complications and disability.
  • Most of these surgeries are conducted without prior approval (children are often not able to give their view) increasing the risk to their physical and mental integrity.
  • Intersex people are often treated as disabled.
• Discrimination, abuse and stigma: often faced by people without a hetero-normal sexual orientation causing immense suffering.
• Biological aberrations invite social reactions (like in the case of athlete Pinki Pramanik).

Several Interventions for Rights of Transgender People

• Judicial: SC held that no one should be forced to undergo medical procedures, including sex reassignment surgeries, sterilisations, and hormonal therapy as a requirement for legal recognition of their gender right.
  • SC had struck down Section 377 of the IPC on same-sex relations in 2018.
• Global: UN Committee for the Rights of Persons with Disability had observed that governments should prevent sex normalising surgeries.
• National: Delhi government has constituted a committee to look at the issue of transgender people.
  • Punjab University has introduced a column for the third gender in the admission form, besides providing other facilities for them.

Conclusion: Individual choices apart, attempts should be made to ensure the social and economic wellbeing of transgender people, and most importantly, ensure their acceptance.